A-Infos (en) Britain, Anarchist Federation Organise #67 - REVIEW - Charles H. Kerr - Radical Publishers is 120 years old

006 sees the 120th anniversary of the birth of the radical publishers 
Charles H. Kerr - making it the oldest `publishers of anti-establishment 
literature' around today. Founded in Chicago 1886 to print radical 
Unitarian literature, CHK soon developed towards publishing anarchist 
and socialist material under the radicalising influence of the Haymarket 
fit-up, and has been publishing continuously ever since. One of the very 
first successes that the company had was in fact key in the campaign to 
pardon the surviving anarchists, Lester C. Hurrard's The Coming Climax 
(!) being particularly influential in Governor Atgeld's decision to 
issue a pardon in 1893.

The mainstay of the early catalogue tended to be what are today known as 
`Marxist classics' but which in their time were important popularises of 
progressive ideas amongst the working class. A torrent of books and 
pamphlets flooded from the CHK press in the period up to 1920 covering 
industrial unionism, working class history, atheism, sex education, 
anthropology, economics (Mary E. Marcy's classic of the genre Shop Talks 
on Economics that sold over two million copies!) and the first ever 
complete English language edition of the three volumes of Capital.

Alongside this CHK also published the highly sophisticated monthly 
theoretical journal International Socialist Review (ISR) which was 
associated with the extreme left of the Socialist Party and the IWW. 
Until it was forced to close by repression following it's opposition to 
the US's entry into WW1 in 1918 ISR was probably the foremost English 
language journal in the world - that such a journal also managed to 
reach a circulation of 45,000 under the very difficult conditions for 
radical organising in the first few decades of the 20th century in the 
US attests to its very high standards married to a wide accessibility.

The ISR was characterised by the quality of its contributors and the 
originality of their articles, which in the main came from the left wing 
of the Second International - of those elements that fought hardest, 
longest and earliest against the Internationals degeneration into 
reformism and social patriotism - writers such as Anton Pannekoek, 
Herman Gorter, Rosa Luxemburg and those who represented the new militant 
syndicalism that was fighting against the same damaging trends in the 
union movement - Joe Hill, Big Bill Haywood, Emile Pouget, James 
Connolly. Others who were also introduced to the English speaking world 
through ISR included Lenin, Kollantai and Trotsky. Cartoons were carried 
by such powerful voices of the working class experience as Ralph Chaplin 
and Robert Minor (before he ditched anarchism for paid Stalinism), 
Arturo Giovanaetti and Jack London. And all this under the very capable 
leadership of the remarkable Mary E.Marcy - who actually killed herself 
in despair when the state eventually did manage to shut down the ISR.

Following the end of WW1 the company carried on as best it could despite 
suffering from constant state interference and financial difficulties, 
but on a drastically reduced scale. New books were still published but 
they became rarer and rarer during this period. Finally in 1928, Charles 
H Kerr retired after nearly 50 years at the helm - he passed the running 
of the company onto John Keracher and The Proletarian Party - a very odd 
bunch of working class autodidacts with a passion for lectures, free 
`proletarian universities' and debate. (Incidentally, Paul Mattick, the 
veteran Council Communist was expelled from the PP in 1931 for 
`factionalism'). The PP took very careful care of the press, despite the 
predictions of many that they would simply utilise it to sectarian ends. 
Instead they used it to keep key Marxist classics in print and to 
circulate educational material - they even managed to make the first 
English translation and publication of Engel's important Anti-Duhring 
under very difficult circumstances.

The PP finally dissolved in 1971 after a 60 year existence in which they 
"never merged with any other party, never admitted defeat, never 
disbanded, independent to the last" in the words of one of the IWW 
affiliated members of the group which now took over the running of the 
company, injecting a fresh dynamic and more lively approach than the 
aging members of the PP had been able to.

New books now began to appear alongside the traditional classics - the 
first ever biography of Lucy Parsons, books on Eugene Debs and Joe Hill 
(Franklin Rosemont's book on Hill being one of the best books on radical 
working class culture ever published), books on labour organising in the 
south, Haymarket collections, books on black revolt, working class 
autobiographies, Hobo life, Surrealism, Marxism, Jazz, poetry, cartoons 
and many, many other subjects without there being any noticeable let up 
in the pace. They have played an absolutely crucial role in keeping the 
idea of popular working class social history, history from below, 
history by for and of the working class at the forefront of our 
struggles - they have always known that reclaiming our past is key to 
building our common future.

Let us hope, that they continue to flame the flames of discontent for as 
long as it's needed!
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